Using new optical-diagnostic techniques, Sandia combustion researcher Mark Musculus and his colleagues identified the sources of key pollutants from LTC engines. Understanding how LTC works as a combustion technique may lead to broader use of cleaner diesel engines. (Photo by Dino Vournas)

A few years ago, the automotive and engine industries presented researchers at Sandia National Laboratories with a mystery. Notably, the companies did so separately, each approaching their national-lab research partners at the Combustion Research Facility (CRF) in Livermore, California, with in-house lab engine test results that none of their highly experienced experts had yet encountered.

Every time the company engineers and combustion specialists “changed the operations of their engines to try to achieve some environmental gain like lower emissions, they ran into the same issue—increased carbon monoxide and unburned fuel levels in the exhaust,” said combustion scientist Mark Musculus (in Sandia’s Engine Combustion Dept.). “Everybody had the same problem, and nobody knew why it was happening.”

Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC., a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International, Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525.